I LOOKED AT my watch and it was 3 p.m. I no longer had the pocket watch Bill gave me long ago as a birthday gift, inscribed with his nickname for me, BY GOD. I lost it during our final wilderness journey together back in Washington. In any case, such a thing was out of style now, with everyone wearing wristwatches. A pocket watch had been a little quaint even then, but I had liked its dandiness.
So Lena was coming. I didn’t feel like working anymore and decided to cut out early. I would take one of the local ferries down the length of the Chao Phraya. It was peaceful on the water. I liked the sight of the golden temple spires, more fanciful than any church tower, rising up from the trees as I sailed by. I supposed if I did not get on the boat to the palazzo, Dass would accompany me anyhow. He never let me out of his sight, and I was starting to find him almost as annoying as that Shively. No, I would not go that far. There was something of the graveyard about Shively. Bill picked some mighty strange companions, but I guess they all had their uses. Perhaps I just needed to make more of an effort with Dass. He was an exotic, genteel fellow and I would like to know more of his history.
Aboard the ferry, I put up my umbrella and was glad I had brought it. It was a hard thing to remember, since it had the opposite purpose as in Washington State: there it was for rainy days, here it was for sun. Not every longtail boat had an awning. In Siam, things were not designed around the frailties of the white man. We were a small minority, and the British had never ruled here to mold the country to their needs.
“Have you ever had a sunburn, Dass?”
“No.”
He kept his back to me while the boat cut smoothly through the water. Well, I’d just try to enjoy the ride. It was peaceful. While the ferry was motorized, most of the boats in the river had silent oarsmen. The clatter of automobiles was like a headache I never knew I had until it was gone. It was the same with the trains that clanked into Bangkok, steam engines of a type I had not seen since I was a child. I wondered if Lena would step off one of these antiques, appearing out of the smoke like an apparition.
Standing at the edge of the ferry, I stared into the tree branches overhanging the water. Not one bird to tempt Dass into conversation. I had never seen the river so devoid of life.
Dass stood silently at my shoulder.
We approached five grey towers washed out to nearly white in the harsh sunlight. They struck me as more ancient than the gold ones, as though their outer coating had been worn off over ages. “What’s that temple called?” I asked.
“Wat Arun.”
“Do you know its history?”
“Not much, sahib. I am no Buddhist. But the base of the temple is from Siam’s Hindu era, which is the religion of my ancestors,” he said. “Arun is the god of the rising sun. He was born too early from his egg and so did not achieve the beauty of the noon sun, like his brother, who was born at the correct time. But Arun has the consolation of the paler beauty of dawn.”
“I like it. Shows not everything goes to the top gun.”
We stood admiring the temple as the boat slowly passed by. I shaded my eyes but it was still too bright. I should come at dawn one day to appreciate it fully. The more I thought of it, the more I liked Dass’s story. I preferred the soft early light to the glare of noon myself. My eye caught a bobbing motion from a tree branch overhanging the river—a spot of pink, like a bird spun from candy floss.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing.
“Black-backed kingfisher,” he said. “Nice find.”
“How’d you know from this distance?”
“Bright colour, small size, large beak, and most of all, that bobbing motion. Every bird moves in a unique way. It’s no trick. It’s the same as how you would recognize your love, even from far away.” He rotated his body as the boat moved past to keep his eyes on the bird. It shot at top speed out of the tree and low across the water, and was suddenly gone.
I was uncomfortable about his reference to love. How was my face composed when he saw me open the telegram about Lena? “How do you know so much about birds?” I asked instead.
“When I was a boy, by accident I shot a bird that was special. I had never seen one like it before. I took it to the Bombay Natural History Society to learn what it was. The president of the group took a liking to me and encouraged me to keep a journal of the birds I saw. I studied biology for a year at university but my family fell on hard times and I could not continue. Perhaps if I had been allowed to join the Society my life would have been different. But natives were not allowed.”
“In America we believe in equality,” I said.
“Are there not places the negro is not allowed?”
“In the south, yes,” I conceded. “But a Black man was a part of my former business with Mr. Yardley.”
“Did he have an equal share with the white men?”
“Yes. And the woman, too.”
Dass looked pensive. I hoped I hadn’t stirred up a hornet’s nest. I didn’t know what his arrangement was with Bill. But my own standing might be no better than Dass’s, or possibly worse. So far I had mainly been a financial drain. I would prove my worth to Bill when Lena arrived. Though how I was going to smooth things over, I didn’t know yet.
I got rid of Dass by telling him I had work to do on Bill’s orders. I went to scope out the port, so I was familiar with its layout should Lena arrive there. I’d only seen it for a few minutes when I came to Siam, what with Shively shoving me along. Then I took a taxi to get a closer look at the train station he’d also rushed me through. Where might Lena stand waiting? I wanted to be ready.
I asked the cab driver to let me out in Chinatown, which was a short stroll from the station, and had a reputation for better restaurants than the Siamese districts. I couldn’t read any signs so I picked a place that looked busy. Dead ducks hung from hooks in the window, but one had to learn to ignore such things. I managed to order a soup that I struggled with, the noodles slipping from my chopsticks. I was trying my best to learn them along with some basic words of Siamese. It helped that their word for thank-you, though difficult to say correctly, involved a prayer motion with the hands and a bob of the head, so I could always make myself understood that way. The soup lady responded with a brilliant smile as I paid my bill at the back counter. I don’t know, maybe she only spoke Chinese.
I realized I’d left my umbrella on the ferry in my hurry to leave Dass and cursed under my breath. To hide from the sun, I stayed underneath the porticoes of the shops, solid Victorian buildings of wood or plaster, lining Yaowarat Road. Shop owners swept their squares of sidewalk with handmade brooms, while chickens stood glum but resigned beneath rattan cages shaped like upside-down bowls. Ceramic pots by each door held small trees and flowering shrubs, freshening up the otherwise grey street, which was paved on this main thoroughfare. There were some old billboards from before the war, in English, for Eveready and Coca-Cola, which made me feel briefly homesick. I was jolted back to the present by an ad with a ghostly Asian woman smoothing cream on her face, the only English words among the jumble of foreign characters being “Snail White.” A strange beauty aim given the lowliness of mollusks. I never did understand American women—in Siam it seemed hopeless indeed.
As I carried on past a white temple perched atop a high stone staircase, I recalled how Bill told me it contained a Buddha made of five tons of gold. I’d like to see it sometime, but I had too much to do before Lena arrived, so I carried on. The street was a chaos of people milling over the tram lines, a danger to themselves and a hindrance to public transit. The traffic here was mainly three-wheeled bicycle rickshaws, and the native drivers wore an odd uniform of British pith helmets and shorts. Was this some misguided government attempt at Westernizing the people? I suppose they looked happier than the men in traditional sarongs who played the part of mules, hauling loaded wooden carts. Everywhere little tables were laid out with fruits and vegetables in front of the real shops, with skinny country vendors squatting behind each one. Were they hopeful or hopeless? How long did it take for one feeling to bleed into the other?
Reaching Hua Lamphong station, I spent a good forty-five minutes circling it and examining all its corners. Every shady niche outside held a food stall, and small sparrows pecked at the ground, thin and barely feathered in the heat. Curs hung back, bedraggled and long snouted. Inside, underneath the high curved roof, some shops sold newspapers and cigars, while others displayed lengths of silk cloth, which young Siamese women eyed wistfully. Behind a tall teak enclosure, labelled in English, “Silence: Monks Only Waiting Area,” holy men in burgundy robes fanned themselves, expressionless, their empty silver bowls beside them on the benches. I thought of Smile’s ruse and peered uneasily at their faces before passing on.
Looking upward, I figured the giant wall clock in the main hall was a good place to meet. Here, each minute ticked by, hugely momentous. I crossed the polished stone floor and entered the platform where the trains stopped. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw a smaller clock over the doorway, alongside a portrait of King Ananda, who was thin and delicate. The English newspapers said that he had just reached the age of majority, and had returned from his studies in Switzerland to take the throne in December. This was the king that Bill meant to protect, if what he told the guard was true. Frankly I had a tough time imagining Bill taking that on—it was so unlike anything he’d done before. Maybe somebody offered him a lot of money. Standing beneath the gold-framed portrait as the crowds parted around me, I wondered idly what it would be like to be born a king. From what I understood, in Siam a king was halfway to being a Buddha, their god.
As foreigners in all kinds of strange clothes flowed by me, I wondered what would happen if you put the world’s religions in a boxing ring—if one would come out on top as the ultimate truth. Or were all religions just stories we told ourselves to find meaning in our small lives, and keep the fear of death at bay? Bill had taken a surprising interest in this Buddha business, and had told me a good deal about it. Maybe that was why he’d want to save the king. Was Bill seeking some kind of redemption?
When I thought of his fingers probing the floor tiles in the royal temple, I thought it more likely that he coveted the Buddhists’ wealth. He’d told me the tops of the towers were solid gold, and sported diamonds so high up that only heavenly beings could see them. “What a goddamn waste!” he’d said, sounding more like the Bill I knew. But why would he risk stealing that Emerald Buddha, under the nose of hundreds of guards, when he had a perfectly legal method to get rich with his opium? I supposed Bill had never been happy unless he had a challenge that would crush a regular man. I sighed. I was a regular man.
I compared my watch to the clock above me and inched the hands ahead by one minute to match it. My visit here was a piece of foolishness, and I fancied a change of scene. At the Oriental Hotel, I could talk comfortably to the Americans and Englishmen who were arriving in the country, more almost by the day. The Americans were not good news for Bill. Hopefully no one would recognize him in his altered circumstances, but it was still safer for me to scope out the bar alone.
When I left the station the sun blasted me like a sucker punch. By the time I reached the curb sweat poured down my back, and with relief I stepped inside one of the few taxi cabs waiting. Even with the window open it was still sweltering inside. I removed my hat, and in the rearview mirror I saw it left a dent where the band had squashed down my hair. I turned the Panama hat to read the label inside: a Montecristi Super Fino, just like Bill’s. He had left it sitting on my dresser one day as a gift. I believe he took some pleasure in forcing me to ape him—back in Seattle he had dragged me to his favourite tailor—though reluctantly I had to admit this Panama hat was the ideal protection from the tropical sun. Of course, the wealthy locals seemed not to wear hats, because they preferred to avoid being outside entirely. Only I, Bill’s lackey, was left to bake outside at midday. I had the sudden urge to crumple up the hat, but smoothed it carefully instead, since there was a dress code at the Oriental.
The Oriental Hotel bar was soothing with its dark wood panelling and private nooks. It nodded to the locale with teak filigrees crowning the bar like the border to an exotic land. As I scanned the room, I wondered what an arms trader looked like. So far I hadn’t met any, at least that would admit it. Whatever they were up to, the foreigners here struck me as cuckoo, because they were willing to descend into the chaos left after the war. It was no place for cozy homebodies. Like me, I thought with a sigh as I raised my hand at the bartender. Pull yourself together, By God, I thought, conjuring the power of Bill’s name for me.
I ordered a gin and tonic, hoping to build more malarial resistance. It was not comfortable living so close to the river. The biting insects rose up in clouds every sunset, and Bill laughed at me when I took off in alarm and refused to come outside until they had settled again after dark. But Jesus, he had had malaria, and I noticed that he meandered into the palazzo not long after I closed myself in. I think even Bill feared the mosquitoes, though he’d never admit it.
“You been here long, in Siam?” asked the man on the stool to my left.
“Six weeks maybe.”
“I just arrived. Name’s Warner. You?” He reached over to shake my hand.
“Byron,” I admitted, disliking my name whenever it was laid out like a dead fish in front of people.
He was American—East Coast money, I figured from the accent. Warner was dressed casually in a pale yellow cotton shirt. The way he carried himself was self-assured, and he spoke in hearty tones as though confident you would find him fascinating no matter what he said. He was what I imagined an Ivy League man must be like. His glasses could not conceal his craggy good looks, though I judged him to be five years older than me, in his early forties. Blond, with no trace of grey. The ladies still went for him, I guessed. A fellow who got whatever he wanted.
“What business brings you here?” I asked.
“Oh, you know, import export.”
I wanted to roll my eyes at his shillyshallying, but I restrained myself. God knows, he could be on the straight and narrow. But what legal thing could be worth importing or exporting in Siam? The economy was in ruins. The government had a store of rice, but that was hardly worth the interest of a man of his station. I would have to draw him out.
“I deal in gems and other resources of the mountain tribes. Of Burma,” I said. He kept his profile to me, but I could see his face fully reflected in the bar mirror, appearing as if floating between bottles of scotch.
“What’s it like?”
“I haven’t been there yet. My—” I was going to say boss, but Bill wasn’t really that, after all, and I did not want this man to think I was nobody— “associate manages that side of things. William Yardley. He’s well known in Bangkok.”
“Then I’d like to meet him.” He handed me his card and I studied it. Nice cream paper, raised cursive script. Warner Knox, Jr., Resident at the Oriental Hotel, Bangkok.
“You’re staying on here?” If he could afford the Oriental for long enough to put it on his card, he certainly had the kind of money we were looking for. It was the most expensive hotel in the city.
“For now. Though I’m sick of living out of a suitcase, and looking for a house to rent. All the best places seem to be taken. Have you found something?”
“Yes, though you can only get to it by boat, and that takes getting used to. It’s like being marooned on an island.”
Shut up, Byron, I thought. Why did I tell him that? Bill had not ordered me to keep our location private, but he didn’t exactly want it advertised in the newspaper, either.
I felt at risk of doing something wrong in this exchange. I needed to confer with Bill before I gave away more of our game. There was something about Warner’s expectant silence that made me want to tell him things, and I did not trust myself. I downed my drink. “Sorry, got to run. Great meeting you. See you again soon, I hope.”
He waved as I left, already turning to speak to the fellow sitting on his other side. Well, he was no wallflower.
The pier was only a minute’s walk away, through the hotel garden speckled with a few solitary Englishmen in white like mushrooms in the shade. I continued down a narrow street, past the brick Catholic mission with its spread-armed Christ behind a wrought-iron fence. A group of bald monks in pink robes walked past, as though to prove whose religion really belonged to the streets. With a shock, I realized from the shape of their bodies beneath the cloth that they were women. I hung back near the fence as they passed, no doubt headed for the green and red pagoda that was just visible beyond the Oriental Hotel’s perimeter wall. I was in no mood to ride a crowded local ferry, so I asked the attendant, who spoke English, to instruct a private water taxi to take me to pier thirteen, across from the palazzo. I would take Bill’s longtail from there, because he didn’t like strange boats pulling up at his dock.
When I arrived, Bill was ensconced in his library, reading the South China Morning Post. He set it aside to hear my report, and his fingers were stained grey from the cheap newsprint. I told him I’d found a wealthy prospect at the Oriental Hotel. “An American, I think,” I said.
“Did you trust him?”
“Not sure. I didn’t trust myself around him. He seemed like somebody trying to find out more about you than he was willing to give away.”
“You say he’s rich?”
“Must be, if he’s taken up residence there. Costs a mint. And he seemed interested about the gems. That’s all I mentioned so far.”
Bill carefully wedged the newspaper in the magazine rack beside his chair and stared into space a moment, his expression unreadable.
“This man’s business is top priority. Good work.” He stood up and clapped me on the shoulder, and I could feel myself grinning like a fool while he told me to book his favourite table for the three of us in the Oriental dining room, for tomorrow night. So I hadn’t botched the whole thing after all.
That evening, lying down on my bed, I stared up into the swirling fan high above me on the ceiling. Bill, praising me? I wished I had it in writing, it happened so seldom. Damn it, why did it matter? I was starting to step out of Bill’s shadow, I reminded myself. Maybe Lena would sense that when she saw me again.
I pulled the sheet off my chest so the fan would cool me, and I went to sleep, smiling.